Children’s hospital delayed over tender

A change in tender terms for the proposed National Children’s Hospital, earmarked for a site at the west end of St James’s Hospital in Dublin, will delay the selection process by two months.

However Tom Costello, chairman of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, told The Irish Times that this delay would be "recovered later and won't affect delivery of the hospital".

The board advertised a tender for design teams on July 3rd last and received several submissions. However, following a recent meeting with the Department of Health, it decided to change the terms.

Those who made submissions were informed last week that the board was “discontinuing” the procurement process under way and “initiating a separate process” for the children’s hospital tender.

Second thoughts
Originally, the board envisaged a "design and build" package, in which the competing contractors would have their own design teams, but began to have second thoughts about how this would work.

In effect, under the original terms, the winning contractor’s design team would take over from the architects of the scheme selected by the board; they would then have no role in delivering the project.

Mr Costello, who was contracts manager with John Sisk for many years, said there was a “better way of doing things” – by retaining the pre-selected design team to oversee construction of the hospital.

“There’s a big risk in terms of planning and a history of cost over-runs on projects such as this. We have a very good board now and we want to do things right, so we have to start from scratch really.”

Completion
Board members include John Cole, who was head of procurement for the Northern Ireland Department of Health and Social Services, and Tim Bouchier-Hayes, a solicitor with wide experience of construction.

Mr Costello said the development board wanted to get “the best in the world in their disciplines” – architects, structural engineers and other professionals – and retain them to see it through to completion.

“The process will have to restart and we’ll lose a bit of time,” he said. “We’ll be appointing the design team two months later than planned, but then we’ll go to the market with an exemplary scheme.”

Under the earlier plan for a children’s hospital on the Mater site – turned down by An Bord Pleanála for its height and bulk – architects O’Connell Mahon would have been replaced by the contractor’s team.